Climate change: Innovation in water management

Climate change: Innovation in water management

22/02/2017

The water cycle is being affected by climate change, which is seriously increasing the risk of heavy rains and extreme droughts, and has huge societal and economic impacts.

BINGO (Bringing INnovation to onGOing water management - a better future under climate change), a Horizon 2020 funded project, studies how average and extreme conditions of climate change scenarios will influence the water cycle in the next 10 years.

Reducing the uncertainty of near-term climate predictions

The project, which has been running for 18 months, made available downscaled climate predictions for the near future for the six research sites in Cyprus, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain. These areas represent a range of climatic conditions and conflicts involving water use by different economic activity sectors like urban tourism, agriculture and hydro-electricity. This will enable a potential replication of the developed solutions in Europe, and particularly in the Mediterranean Basin.

Through a series of workshops, BINGO stimulates interaction between researchers and the various end-users from the case study regions (companies, water utilities, local governments and NGOs), to foster the co-development and validation of robust adaptation strategies. Workshops participants identified the need to strengthen the bottom-up initiatives with more global strategies as a way to enhance synergies and prevent potential conflicts around water use.